LO CÒR DE LA PLANA

DANCING SONGS

World music Sacem prize 2005

Traditional singing? No doubt but clearly more than that!

Dancing songs that carry you away in a cheerful transe…

In the Occitan area as elsewhere, the dancing songs repertoire was once intended for evening gathering parties, when an instrumentalist’s performance seemed too expensive to the dancers. Then the musician was not listened to for what he had to “say” but was in charge of carrying the dancers and replacing “the music”. A modesty exercise to which only virtuoso singers accepted to submit.

With Tant Deman, Lo Còr de la Plana blossoms, distorting this practical aspect of traditional dancing, adapts it to other musical aesthetics and apply the good ideas of former dancing music performers to nowadays musical styles. Whether they are inspired from traditional Occitan or modern repertoires (rock, ragga, techno music) the songs are sublimated by an adaptation to minimalist musical means : voices, corporal percussion, frame drums.

The lyrics are original creations from the members of the choir and comment in a poetical and political manner on the sensations generated by dancing.

Duration : 1:15

Staff : 5 musician/singers; 1 sound tech

Discography : “Tant Deman” Buda / Universal 2007

“Lo Còr de la Plana has given birth to a musical genre. Their provençal polyphony doesn’t belong to tradition but they draw part of their repertoire from there. Armed with bendirs (large Northern African tambourines), the five performers, who also accompany themselves on foot-stamping and hand-clapping, build rhythmic sequences around their dancing songs, sung in coastal provençal, and soon transform a concert-hall into an overheated centrifuge”.

Libération – François-Xavier Gomez

“Dancing, which the band highly encourages, at a certain point feels necessary”.

Boston Globe – Siddharta Mitter